In continuation of my post the other day about the Tea Partyers' idea that's so old it's new again -- no health insurance for anybody -- here's Rush Limbaugh, riding the crest of this wave of insanity:
How many times have I detailed for you how much money I save not using insurance. I just go to doctor, go to hospital, negotiate the price, and walk out of there and pay for it. A lot of people can do this. You don't have to have tons of money to be able to do this, take installment plan payments like everybody else does. But everybody's so conditioned that they can't get treated unless they've got health insurance. Everybody's like sheep in this, can't even have an average doctor visit without insurance. I think it is a crying shame. I think it is literally a disservice to the people of this country what's been done, attitudinally. There is, I would say, easily a huge majority, vast majority, of people who believe that without health insurance they're gonna die. That's why it's such a big deal to people.[...] I don't know what it's like to be conscious every day and my foremost fear being my health insurance and whether or not I've got it and am gonna keep it or what have you. But for a lot of people it's everything. It's the only thing. And that exists, the reason people think that way, can't really blame 'em, 'cause every day of their lives they are told that food or that beverage is gonna kill 'em or give them this disease or that disease or their genetics incline them to alcoholism or Parkinson's or whatever.
I don't even know where to begin with such utter bullshit.
Fact: Medical bills are the #1 cause of personal bankruptcy in the U.S. Fact: 45 million Americans do not have health insurance (and it's not because they're happy shopping around and paying in installments). Fact: you can't bargain for a product when you don't even know what product you need (this is health care in a nutshell). Fact: most hospitals do not have price lists. That's right, even if you offer to pay in cash, they can't tell you the price until well after the fact. Trust me, I've been there. Fact: you can't plan or save for catastrophic injuries and unexpected illnesses, you just can't. And for this very reason, for such economic instances, smart people invented insurance.
Earlier this year, a week in the hospital for my infant child cost more than $30,000, while our insurance paperwork was still in process. Bill collectors were harassing us 3-4 times a day until the paperwork cleared weeks later. ($30,000 is a down payment on a house in most places in America). There's no time to negotiate or shop around when your child is dying, believe me.
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| Ah, the good ole' days of family medicine. |
Rush is such an isolated, aloof, childless, Ivory-Tower gazillionaire that he's completely lost touch with America. This guy is living in a different country, a different stratosphere. I can't believe the nerve of him. I can't believe his listeners don't stone him to death.
If this doesn't prove to you once and for all that Rush Limbaugh and his horde of talk-radio imitators trying to make fast buck by talking irresponsible nonsense are not on the Little Guy's side, and in fact know nothing about the Little Guy's troubles, then I don't know what will. Just because these hucksters say they like NFL football and fast food doesn't make them one of us.
This is Rush telling poor sick people, "Let them eat cake." Off with his head!
The Rush Limbaugh Show | August 23, 2013
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